Bryn Mawr

I’t s an exciting new month here at Obsidian Portal, and we’re starting it off with a bang! Ready? BANG! Ok that was fun. Now let’s move on to this month’s Featured Campaign, Bryn Mawr, a fan favorite by poet warrior, Dra8er.

Dra8er was kind enough to give us a small interview about his game, his players, and share some of the wisdom he’s collected over the years as a gamer. Let’s read on, shall we?

Obsidian Portal: How much of the campaign/system is original content developed by you and your players?

Dra8er: We are using the D&D 4th edition rule set with a fair amount of homebrewed rules. This is my/everyone in the groups first time playing 4th edition D&D. I was hard pressed to make the switch from 3.5 & figured a dungeon crawl would be a great place to start. I’d like to think that the campaign itself is all original, but I draw influence from my years of gaming and many things are inspired by those experiences I’m sure. I would be unable to point directly to any source. The whole idea is to have fun and create a great story together…

Obsidian Portal: Your campaign looks great; can you tell us more about it?

Dra8er: I wanted to do an “old school” dungeon crawl for 4th edition; I already had a theme in mind (Abandoned Dwarven Citadel) and went about fleshing the mechanics. It has slowly evolved over the last year as I crafted pieces of it. Its fluid as well, in that not everything is set in stone, it will evolve more as the players interact with it. I also wanted the small town to be fully fleshed out, giving the players another area to “role-play” should they need a break from the delve, so it will be an integral part of the campaign as well, not just a base of operations.

Obsidian Portal: Where do you get your inspiration the story?

Dra8er: I had crafted Bryn Mawr and the area as part of another storyline/campaign. In that campaign it is not an abandoned citadel, but a bastion for good in the savage north. During its use I had the idea, what would happen if this place was abandoned for a few decades? Tons of insidious thoughts began pouring out; I actually had to work hard to whittle them down to a logical point.

Obsidian Portal: How well do you know your players?

Dra8er: One player is my son, another is a friend from work (a newbie to table top RPG’s but Vet of World of Warcraft), another is an old colleague, and the others are new friends recruited for this campaign.

Obsidian Portal: What kinds of challenges are you faced with in your campaign?

Dra8er: Currently my only real challenge is time, or the lack there of. I have put a lot into it but there is always tons more that can be done & I never have that “phew OK finished” feeling. I also have spent a lot of time assembling and crafting 3D terrain for this game. I’ve always used miniatures, trinkets, battle-mats and the like, but I’ve never truly crafted an entire campaign with 3D scenery. I’ve bought and commissioned a lot of work for this and hoping it pays off in the end, so far so good! But this has presented itself to be difficult in that I can’t always find what I need and have had to “rewrite” a few encounters to fit the “scene”.

Obsidian Portal: What aspects of your campaign are you really proud of?

Dra8er: How well it has paid off in terms of outright fun so far, we’ve had a blast so far and everyone is always pumped to return. Just hope I can keep up the excitement. There are a few other “things” I’m particularly proud of, but I can’t discuss them yet as they would be spoilers, mwa ha ha ha…

Obsidian Portal: What have been the highlights of the campaign according to your players?

Dra8er: The overall flow of the game and our ability to not get bogged down in mechanics, I must admit I’ve lucked out and wound up with an excellent group of gamers!

Obsidian Portal: Where can we get more information on Savage Sorcery?

Dra8er: The “official” website is still being built and should be up soon (fingers crossed), but you can keep up to date on what we’re doing over on Facebook – Savage Sorcery.